


Nothing is different

by Rae_Saxon



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cuddling, F/M, Until Jack ruins the mood, and more - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:08:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22434655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rae_Saxon/pseuds/Rae_Saxon
Summary: The Doctor is trying to process her unknown past and realises she needs to talk to the one person who really knows her. Meanwhile, the Master is playing hard to get - For about five seconds. He's always been bad at that particular game. || Set after Fugitive of the Judoon, so contains spoilers, duh!
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 337





	Nothing is different

**Author's Note:**

> I genuinely just needed to process last night's episode and this fanfic helped me. Plus, I needed to make it about Doctor/Master. As it always should be.

"Nothing is different," she whispered, frantically working on her console. "Nothing has changed."

She wasn't sure if that was good or bad or even true. Something had changed, something fundamentally, something that could shake up her whole understanding of who she was.

A whole past life she couldn't remember? How many more of her were there?  
  
"Everything has changed," she whispered, but that wasn't true either.

Because there was one thing, still one thing, that hadn't changed at all.

She couldn't find the Master.

"Bloody... hell!" She kicked the console with a shout. "Where _are_ you?"

She didn't know what to do, she was at a loss and the Doctor at a loss took quite something. Or did it? Did it still? God, who knew. She certainly didn't.

She paced through the console room, in a circle, always in a circle. Jack had come back, which was great, but scary, mostly scary, really. Her past.... wasn't her past anymore, except it was and that was the hardest part to grasp.

The Timeless Child.... she concentrated, really concentrated, but there was nothing but the flashing image of a dancing child. Always child.

"I need you," she whispered into thin air, and behind her, she heard an annoyed growl.

Graham? No, he doesn't sound quite as.... oh.

She whirled around, where the Master was standing, leaned against the door, in his stupid purple outfit, and a stupid angry expression on his face.

"It's funny how you always seem to say that when you _want_ something from me."

"Where have you been?" the Doctor spat back immediately. "I've been looking for you all over the place!"

He smirked.

"I noticed. Annoyed me into showing up. My TARDIS wouldn't even work properly anymore, you kept on confusing its signals."

"You could've come sooner," she replied with a glare and the Master simply shrugged.

"I could've, but why would I? It's what you get for leaving me stranded in another dimension."

Okay, the Doctor thought, taking a deep breath. She was angry with him, of course, but she was going to have to play this wisely, was going to pretend to be sorry, so he would tell her what she needed to know.

"Fair," she said. "I'm..."

"Oh, don't even start," the Master rolled his eyes. "Don't give me your fake apologies because you're looking for answers."

Her mouth fell open, no words escaping.

"You," she finally brought out, while he walked around her console room, the same circles she had paced, but slower, his hand running over the surfaces as his expression turned thoughtful.

"Me?" he asked, without even looking at her.

"You know me," she whispered and he looked up to her with a frown.

"You notice that _now_?"

"I for-.... it doesn't matter," she quickly shook her head, taking hasty steps towards him, then stopping herself halfway there. He might know her better than anyone else, but he was still shaking with suppressed rage.

And they were still enemies.

"Tell me what you know," she breathed. "Please. I don't understand it anymore, I don't know who I _am_."

He rolled his eyes.

"The same arrogant fool calling himself 'Doctor' is what you are. What did you find?"

She shuddered.

"Someone... in my past. She... she had my TARDIS and said she..." The Doctor swallowed, hard. "I just don't understand."

"You don't, do you?" he replied, almost softly. "A whole species based on the gift of regeneration, eternal life, if the dusty old idiots only grant it to you, brought to them by the Timeless Child, but you cannot see."

"Who is it? The Timeless Child? Who.... what..."

The look on the Master's face scared her more than anything she had ever seen before.

"Come on, Doctor, don't insult your own intelligence. You've seen your own past blundering around, unable to remember it, what do you think is going on? What do you think is the truth?"

"Can't exactly go home and ask, can I?" she spit, lashing out instead of thinking, because if she allowed herself to think, she might figure out the truth and the truth was terrifying her now. "You made sure of that."

"And why did I do that?" he spit back, his eyes ablaze now. "Why do you think would I go and burn everything to the ground, what, do you think, could push me over the edge _that_ much, Doctor?"

She shook her head, tears in her eyes, trembling wildly, trying to turn away from the truth, from the look in his eyes, but she couldn't, she just couldn't and with a strangled sob, she fell to the ground, caught her weight on her hands, body still shaking uncontrollably.

The Master watched her, silently, for a few seconds, then knelt down to her with a sigh.

On her knees, she grabbed his lapels, pulled him closer to her, forced him to look at her.

"I... I can't be... I can't... remember... I don't know... who am I? Who _am I_?"

"Calm down, Doctor," he replied with a grimace, and tore himself out of her grip.

"Calm down?" She still sat there, her hands still raised where she had held him, staring at him with desperation on her face. "My whole being, my past, everything I thought I knew... has just been _rewritten_."

"No," the Master gave back sharply. "It's what it's always been. You've only learned it now. What does it change? Nothing. You're still you, Doctor."

"But how do I even know who that is? Everything I thought I knew..."

She stopped herself, looking down so she didn't have to see the Master's sad smile. She could barely take it right now. He had known, he had known all along and he... had tried to tell her?

But she hadn't listened, had she? Had not taken a single second to just stop and listen, to just believe him, to just... ask.

"A puppet of Gallifrey," she whispered after a little while of silence. "I thought I had escaped them, but they own my whole past, keep it locked away from me, so deep down in their dungeons I can't even remember it. They... they used me and then..."

"It's okay," the Master replied, a little smirk spreading out on his face, so cold it made her shudder. "They've paid for it."

"But it doesn't matter, can't you see?" She cried out. "It doesn't matter. I'm still... not who I thought I'd be. Still just their instrument where I thought I was my own person, with my own will, still..."

He shook his head, grabbing her shoulders with a sudden urgency.

"Don't," he said firmly, his forehead leaning against hers and it gave her a weird sense of calm. "Don't fall down that rabbit hole, Doctor. Believe me, as someone who's given it pretty furniture and a TV license, don't. You're the same old idiot who, with his own free will, decided to run from everything he's ever loved and see the universe. You're the same meddling fool who's got exiled to Earth and made the Brigadier's life living hell. You're the same old idiot who thought it'd be a splendid idea to reform their best friend by locking them in a vault for decades. Nothing's changed."

"Everything's changed," she replied, but a little smile had come back to her face.

"Your past doesn't define you." He rolled his eyes. "Isn't that what you live by? What you keep on telling people when they try to change? That you can be everything you want to be once you've let go? Isn't that the idea you followed when you left Gallifrey?"

"Is it? Who can tell anymore? Maybe we should ask Ruth," she spit out bitterly and the Master frowned.

"Ruth?"

"The Doctor," she shrugged. "I guess. I prefer calling her Ruth. Ugh. My mind is spinning, Master."

"I know. I know. I've been there. It'll get better, after a while. Once you realise how little it changes. Just takes you a while to get there."

He took her in his arms, just then, his hands wrapped around her shoulders, as he leant her gently against his chest and it was nice, it helped, it was familiar. Nothing of the confusion that she felt seemed to be able to follow, just the usual, comforting confusion of loving the man who constantly tried to kill you, but somehow loved you, too.

"How would you feel," she asked after a little while, "if there was a whole regeneration cycle of nice Masters you can't remember?"

To her surprise, he chuckled. She could feel his chest rising and falling beneath her head and it was nice. It was only then that she noticed he had rarely ever laughed in this regeneration, yet.

"I'd be super annoyed," he finally admitted. "Because you'd totally run away with them."

The Doctor lifted her head in stunned silence for a second, then laughed.

"Nah," she finally giggled. "What's love without your partner's murderous tendencies and the emotional turmoil and baggage of centuries?"

"Boring, I say!"

"Totes!"

They looked at each other and broke out into laughter some more. It felt freeing, and slowly, very slowly, the Doctor felt herself coming down from the frantic panic that had settled inside of her.

"Honestly though," she promised after a while, her arms tightly wrapped around the Master. "I don't want some... some past, nice version of you. You're you. Only you. Now. Here. And your fucked up you is perfect for my fucked up me."

The Master raised an eyebrow at her.

"Was that what you thought when you left me to die with the Nazis, met me again 70 years later and then left me stranded in an abandoned dimension? Just asking."

"I... am sorry," the Doctor whispered and found that this time, maybe she meant it after all. "I... have my problems, sometimes, accepting you as part of me. But... you are."

"It' okay," he finally shrugged. "I'll be here, the usual cosmic nuisance to remind you who you are and why exactly you need me."

She laughed, leaning back against him, her head in the crook of his neck.

"It's nice like this. We should do this more often. We used to do that more than the trying to kill and abandon each other part, remember?"

"I believe my memory is quite better intact than yours, Doctor."

She pushed herself away from him with a playfully shocked expression.

"Don't you think it's too early for stupid jokes?"

But he just laughed.

"It's the Master you chose, now you gotta live with him."

"Oh, unbelievable, I give you a compliment _once_ and you shamelessly abuse it."

"That's the Master you chose, now...."  
  
"Oh, shut up!"  
  
She kissed him with a laugh still on her lips, her arms wrapped around his neck as she pulled him down to her, and he took the lead incredibly quickly, pressed her to the ground, as he climbed over her, lips never leaving hers.

This, she thought, as his hands ran underneath her shirt. This will always be who I am. Caught up in this cosmic nuisance. The one constant in my life.

She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulled him closer, rubbed against him with a moan and he chuckled, his lips on her neck, his hands kneading her breasts still underneath the shirt and she thought this moment was perfect, just utterly perfect, with nothing to break it, and then...

"So uhm... bad timing? Or incredibly good timing?”

Jack stood in the middle of the room, vortex manipulator still on his arm, grinning.

The Master growled, his hand going to the pocket of his coat, and the Doctor grabbed his wrist with a threatening look.

"What?" he asked, "don't tell me you're not curious to see how he unshrinks himself after."


End file.
